Love and Other Magical Maladies
by JustALilBitCaughtInTheMiddle
Summary: Lily Evans was magical in a completely muggle way, James decided. With red hair and green eyes and freckles that danced on her nose and cheeks, she could cast a charm that was far more powerful than any latin words or swishing flicks.


Lily Evans loved flowers. She loved them so much she would spend all her time in the garden with her mum when she was a little girl. Her mum would allow her a small plot of the yard to take care of, and every year, Lily's flowers bloomed flawlessly. One year, when it rained as it will in England so hard and long that all of her mum's gleaming flowers lay in a wilted, drunken mess, only Lily's flowers survived- looking somehow as though the rain had bent around them. She hated the winter, though, Lily did. She could always sense when the frost would come and leave her plants brown and brittle and dead. She was shorter than her sunflowers, but she mourned for them all the same.

The summer she turned 10, she no longer contained her flowers in a little plot of the yard, rather the whole yard was like a jungle of petunias, and sunflowers, and lilies and roses- A symphony of color and life where Lily and her sister Petunia read and drew and chattered with their cat, Oscar who played in the catnip they knew he liked. That summer, when the air turned brisk, Lily could hardly stand the thought that all of those lovely colors and the beautiful petals would have the life sucked out of them. She watered her plants everyday, and everyday her and Petunia would play under flower arches and beg the winter not to take them.

And the most amazing thing happened. The cold air came like a tidal wave, and the grass turned brown and the leaves fell from the trees, but Lily's garden stayed as vibrant as ever. The snow came and the wind blew, and everyone said it was a miracle.

Once, Lily saw one of her roses wilting at its petals and she cupped her freckled hands around and begged for it to be beautiful again, and just like that, it was.

That's when Lily Evans knew her garden was no miracle. She was just something… else.

At school, she was a bumbling, tumbling mess of elbows and fire-hair and jump rope songs, but at home she would sit with her flowers and make them draw in their petals and then unfurl, over and over again. There was something mesmerizing about it, and even if she were to get bored, Petunia would _never_ bore of it, she knew.

"What's that you two girls are giggling about?" Their parents would call through the screen door, and Lily would drop the flower from her palm, into the grass between them. And Petunia would holler back with a grin that held something _more_ , "It's just a silly slug mum!" and they would turn again and pick up the flower and make it dance.

At recess sometimes Pet would even leave her older friends and whisper in Lily's ear "Will you show me again?"

Of course Lily would. She loved having her elder sister's attention and so she'd pluck up the dandelions from the schoolyard and sit cross-legged with her sister under the big oak where no one played. It was on an afternoon like this, when Lily first met Severus.

"This one!" Petunia was crying holding out a wildflower, when Severus stepped out from behind the tree, like a shadow. Flustered, Petunia dropped the flower like it burned her, and Lily cupped her hands around hers, hiding it in a praying fold.

"Whatareyoudoinghere?" They long-necked girl mumbled, her words jamming up and then tumbling out all at once.

"Nothing special. Not _magic_. Not like you." The skinny shadow of a boy with black hair and blacker eyes gestured to Lily here.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Said the youngest, eyes wide, attentive.

"The flowers. Don't play coy," he said, sounding much more adult than a 10 year old boy, "You practically show it off here, and your garden-", he stopped here, a bit embarrassed.

"I'm not playing _coy_ ," the redhead spit, making a mental note to find out what exactly that word meant, "And what do you know about my garden anyway?"

Lily was angry, now. Who was this boy to come and extract her secrets so brutally to come and accuse her of things and sneak up on her? As happened when she became impassioned, the flower in her cusped hand began to twitch and stretch and swirl and curl. Like a pale snake, Severus hand came up and pulled her hands back where the flower stay, still suspended in the air. Half a second later it fell to the ground in a gentle heap and three sets of eyes stared at the crumpled daisy. The boy smirked when the two girls shared a look.

Finally Petunia cleared her throat and said in a _very_ composed and adult voice, she was sure, "Fine. Now go on and tell us about this magic business."


End file.
